"It's making you tolerant," he said quietly, "familiar with subtleties, contemptuous of standards. It's rubbing the bloom off you. You let a man who is married come too close to you--you betray enough curiosity concerning him to do it. A drifting woman does that sort of thing, but why do you cut your cables? Good Lord, Geraldine, it's a fool business--permitting a man an intimacy----" "More harmless than his wife permits you!" she retorted. "That is not true." "You are supposed to lie about such things, aren't you?" she said, reddening to the temples. "Oh, I am learning your rotten code, you see--the code of all these amiable people about me. You've done your part to instruct me that promiscuous caresses are men's distraction from ennui; Rosalie evidently is in sympathy with that form of amusement--many men and women among whom I live in town seem to be quite as casual as you are.... I did have standards once, scarcely knowing what they meant; I clung to them out of instinct. And when I went out into the world I found nobody paying any attention to them." "You are wrong." "No, I'm not. I go among people and see every standard I set up, ignored. I go to the theatre and see plays that embody everything I supposed was unthinkable, let alone unutterable. But the actors utter everything, and the audience thinks everything--and sometimes laughs. I can't do that--yet. But I'm progressing." "Geraldine----" "Wait!... My friends have taught me a great deal during this last year--by word, precept, and example. Things I held in horror nobody notices enough to condone. Take treachery, for example. The marital variety is all around me. Who cares, or is even curious after an hour's gossip has made it stale news? A divorce here, a divorce there--some slight curiosity to see who the victims may marry next time--that curiosity satisfied--and so is everybody. And they go back to their business of money-getting and money-spending--and that's what my friends have taught me. Can you wonder that my familiarity with it all breeds contempt enough to seek almost any amusement in sheer desperation--as you do?" "I have only one amusement," he said. "What?" "Painting." "And your model," she nodded with a short laugh. "Don't forget her. Your pretences are becoming tiresome, Duane. Your pretty model, Mrs. Dysart, poses less than you do." Another wave of heart-sickness and anger swept over her; she felt the tears burning close to her lids and turned sharply on him: "It's all rotten, I tell you--the whole personnel and routine--these people, and their petty vices and their idleness and their money! I--I do want to keep myself above it--clean of it--but what am I to do? One can't live without friends. If I don't gamble I'm left alone; if I don't flirt I'm isolated. If one stands aloof from everything one's friends go elsewhere. What can I do?" "Make decent friends. I'm going to." He bent forward and struck his knee with his closed fist.